Photography isn't about seeing, it's about feeling. If I don't have some kind of feeling for what I'm shooting, how can I expect the person who looks at it to feel anything?

I only use a camera like I use a toothbrush. It does the job.

Photography is the truth if it’s being handled by a truthful person.

Seeing, looking at what others cannot bear to see is what my life is all about.

Photography for me is not looking, it's feeling. If you can't feel what you're looking at, then you're never going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures.

The real truth of life is on the streets. Photograph the daily lives of people, and how they exist, and how they fight for space and time and pleasure.

You cannot walk on the water of hunger, misery, and death. You have to wade through to record them.

I met an Englishwoman in Africa. She said she became a doctor because she saw one of my pictures. That’s all I want – just one doctor in Africa.

Sometimes it felt like I was carrying pieces of human flesh back home with me, not negatives. It's as if you are carrying the suffering of the people you have photographed.

I am a professed atheist, until I find myself in serious circumstances. Then I quickly fall on my knees, in my mind if not literally, and I say : 'Please God, save me from this.'

There's always a threat surrounding the things you love

Wanting to be someone else is a waste of who you are

We...we could be friends.'We COULD be rare specimens of an exotic breed of dancing African elephants, but we're not. At least, I'M not.

Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.

I mean, the more a man was in the Devil's power, the less he would be aware of it, on the principle that a man is still fairly sober as long as he knows he's drunk.

Perfection is perfectly simple; fouling things up requires true skill.

I'm British; pessimism is my wheelhouse.

I've had my highs and had my lows but you can't tell me that I am not the baddest chick.

I like Chris Martin. I think he's a really great songwriter.

To remember oneself means the same thing as to be aware of oneself - I am. It is not a function, not thinking, not feeling; it is a different state of consciousness.

Who on earth invented the silly convention that it is boring or impolite to talk shop? Nothing is more interesting to listen to, especially if the shop is not one's own.